National Gallery Of Australia | Audio Tour | George.w.lambert Retrospective

During the early 1900s, images of women and children were a favourite subject for traditional and more modern artists alike. In Portrait group (The mother), Lambert contrasted two women: one wearing the kind of billowing dress worn in feminist and artistic circles, and the other standing next to her with her hand placed cavalierly on her shoulder, wearing a fashionable black satin waisted coat and a high-necked dress. In this way he contrasted the supple, rounded form of one woman against the more statuesque figure of the other, and in so doing suggested the difference between a woman’s role as a mother and that as an independent woman. As with his other family groups he used his wife and children as models, together with their artist friend Thea Proctor. This is one of a number of images of women and children that Lambert painted, to which he gave objective titles such as Equestrian portrait of a boy (cat.26) and Holiday in Essex (cat.44) rather than the subjective ‘The artist’s family’ or ‘Amy, Maurice and